Families in rural China consider it bad luck for a single man to pass into the afterlife without a female companion at his side.

And despite efforts by Beijing to clamp down on superstitions, demand is said to be increasing for female corpses.

The three men, who police said were called Ma, Tang and An, sold one of the women's corpses for 35,000 yuan (NZ$7192).

The men, who are all from China's northwest Gansu province, were stopped by police in April when they were driving the body of a woman to Shaanxi for the ghost wedding.

Ma confessed that he told the woman that they would find her a groom before injecting her with powerful sedatives which killed her.

He killed a woman in similar circumstances in February and sold the body in Shaanxi. He now faces murder charges while his two accomplices face charges relating to human trafficking and concealing the murder.

The black market in selling human remains is believed to have grown in recent years as China's economic boom has seen the rural wealthy pay large sums to meet the needs of their deceased loved ones.

State media have previously said corpses of younger women can fetch up to $18,000.